Archive for the 'Announcements' Category

For the book that I am co-authoring New Trends in Internation Public Relations, my co-author Silvia Cambie and I are required by our publishers to give this standard notice to anyone contributing to the book whether online here on this blog or via email, correspondence, interview or other means.

By making a contribution to the book, you are agreeing to the following:

# that we may use your contribution and edit it for any purpose relating to the book including use in any publication, media or any other form of dissemination

# you assign to us all copyright in you contribution and give consent for our use of your contribution

# you also warrant that nothing contributed by you infringes the copyright or any other rights of any third party or is defamatory or infringes the right of privacy of any third party

# you are not entitled to any payment from any source in relation to your contribution or any publication or dissemination of it

The reason we need this release notice is that the publisher needs us to give similar warranties and promises about the content of the book to them.

Thank you for your understanding about this.

I am delighted to report that my associate Silvia Cambie and I have been commissioned by business book publishers Kogan Page to write a book on New Trends in International Public Relations, aimed at business communicators, PR professionals and marketeers.

I will be focusing on the impact of social media on business communications and how PR practitioners can incorporate social media into their communications and marketing strategies. Silvia will be focusing on all the other key issues for practitioners such as corporate social responsibility, crisis communications and current hot topics and trends affecting international public relations.

We both have a strong interest in cross-cultural issues. Silvia is Italian and has lived and worked across Europe, speaking several European languages fluently. As for me, I have links with Malaysia and the Far East as well as being now based in London, UK. In today’s globalised world, PR practitioners are increasingly needing to work from a cross-cultural perspective so Silvia and I will be exploring the relevance and impact of cross-cultural issues for business communicators online and also offline.

I’ll be letting you know more details about the social media and cross-cultural issues I’ll be researching in the next few weeks. Silvia and I will both be blogging about our research and the progress of the book on our respective blogs and we hope very much that you will all be able to help us by adding your comments or sharing your experiences and thoughts with us. I will certainly give credit in the book and/or on this website to anyone whose contribution I use in the book - please see the contributors release notice for more details regarding contributions.

My dilemma is whether I should blog about this book primarily on my social media blog ZenGuide, because obviously, it’s all about social media - or, on my cross-cultural blog Fusion View, because obviously, it’s also all about cross-culture. If I blog about the book on both of them, will it get confusing if different people comment on one or other of the blogs? Would it be better to choose one of them and then stick to it? But Fusion View has a great international, cross-cultural community there already and I really would love to hear what everyone has to say there. But my cross-cultural readers may not be so interested in social media as such? But if I blog about the book on ZenGuide only, will I lose the cross-cultural dimension by focusing on my social media readers? You see my dilemma. What do you think?

Further information

Silvia’s blog X-Culture is at www.chandacom-xculture.com.

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This is a cross-post from my arts blog Fusion View

Do you know any Malaysian businesses that blog or use social media? Or are you a business-owner, corporate executive or professional person in Malaysia who blogs as part of your business? I need your advice!

I’m writing an article for Communication World, the journal for the International Association of Business Communicators, (IABC) about business blogging in Malaysia. I have a couple of businesses in mind that I will focus on in the article - businesses based in KL who are actively engaging with bloggers and who have blogs themselves.

But I am keen to discover other Malaysian businesses that blog or use social media to promote their enterprise or to engage with their customers.

If you live in Malaysia or have a connection with Malaysia, can help me flesh out the article with some of your thoughts:

# Are there businesses or professional people (eg lawyers, architects etc) do you know of that are engaging with bloggers eg via their own blogging or by making contact with local bloggers?

# Are there any businesses using other types of social media to connect with their clients and customers eg podcasting, video, social networks?

# Do you have any advice for businesses wishing to engage with Malaysian bloggers?

If you are a blogger and you think that your community of bloggers around your blog could help with these queries or may have any experiences/ ideas they can add, please do blog about this query.

Communication World goes out to around 14,000 professionals in PR, marketing and communications around the world as a glossy magazine and also, some of its articles are available as pdfs online. IABC also has a Malaysian chapter. This will be a good opportunity for Malaysian innovation in the blogosphere to be seen world-wide and a good platform to showcase MPH and local litbloggers. I will give full credit to you - and any of your blogger contacts whose information I use in the article.

The deadline for my finished article is the end of July so I hope you’ll be able to let me have your thoughts as soon as possible eg in the next few days so I have a chance to write them up into the article. (Sorry for the short notice - I only got the commission to write the article a couple of days ago!)

Please add a comment or you can email me via the Contact link at the top of this page.

PS. I am going to keep mum about the two businesses that blog that I know of for now as I would like to get fresh ideas from you

Photo: thanks to kleinmatt66 from flickr.com

From time to time, I may post more frequently on ZenGuide than just on Mondays and Thursdays. For my email readers, that means that you may get more than two emails a week with the latest comments and thoughts about communications and social media - but you won’t get more than one a day. If you prefer, you can switch to following ZenGuide using a blog reader like Google Reader or Bloglines where the latest updates will be waiting for you when you go the blog reader rather than coming in to your inbox on the day that ZenGuide is updated.

My post Keeping Track of Blogs You Like tells you more about signing up to a blog reader.

The British Library is building a collection of blogs. This collection will form part of the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) initiative to archive websites of research interest. The archiving of blogs is part of a wider project to archive UK websites for future generations. The UKWAC website explains:

For many, the web has become the information source of first resort. From keeping abreast of latest news and accessing online journals and datasets, through to finding information about travel and sport, the web has become the information tool of choice.

However, despite our apparent dependence on this medium very little attention has been paid to the long-term preservation of websites. Indeed, with the life of an average website estimated to be around 44 days (about the same lifespan as a housefly) there is a danger that invaluable scholarly, cultural and scientific resources will be lost to future generations.

To address this problem, a consortium of six leading UK institutions is working collaboratively on a project to develop a test-bed for selective archiving of UK websites.

The six institutions are The British Library as lead partner, The National Archives, The National Library of Wales, JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), The Wellcome Trust and The National Library of Scotland. The project began in June 2004 - a news report from ZDNet at the time wrote: “Each member of the consortium will choose content relevant to its subject. All types of Web content will be included, from government documents to blogs.”

To me, this is a clear indicator that blogs are now moving into their prime. From the public perception of their being the personal journals of misfit geeks or kids a few years ago, blogs have come a long way in a very short period of time. They have evolved into business communications used by an increasing number of top notch businesses as well as by solo professionals and small enterprises - including GlaxoSmithKline (Alliconnect blog), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ BTW blog) and Avis (We Try Harder blog). And now, they are being taken seriously by researchers, academics, scientists and the guardians of the UK’s intellectual heritage.

I wonder if it’s only a question of time now before blogs and other social media are studied at university level as art forms in their own right? After all, these days you can take degrees in English Literature, Film Studies, Photography, Visual Arts, Design etc - considered by previous generations as not sufficiently serious to be subjects of study. When the first novel appeared two hundred years ago, it was greeted with derision and even horror by the intellectuals of the day who viewed poetry - and in particular classical poetry - as the greatest form of literature. Look at things now, with the novelists now the literary heavyweights and poets, sadly, much less high-profile. So, who knows, we may soon be able to apply to study an MA in Blogging…?

Disclosure: I am also delighted to say that I was recently invited to submit my writing and culture blog Fusion View for archiving as part of this project. The email from the British Library’s Web Archivist said: “We would like to invite you to have your site included in this important collection for Internet research. We will be selecting some 150 key sites to form the basis of the blog’s collection until August 2007 but archiving will continue into the future.”

Photo: of the British Library Reading Room thanks to imagesonline.bl.uk

This is a cross-post from my cross-culture blog, Fusion View

Fusion View is being featured on the BBC Radio 5 programme Pods & Blogs on Monday 25 June night (actually 02am on Tuesday 26 June) when it will go out over the airwaves to around half a million AM listeners and half a million FM listeners. The programme will also be available online for ONE WEEK on their website but unfortunately not as a podcast so if you’d like to catch it, you need to go to the site and listen during this coming week. (The Fusion View piece is at around 30 mins into the show, after the news and sport.)

I met Chris Vallance, the presenter, for lunch a few weeks ago at Hayes Galleria by London Bridge and we had a wide-ranging discussion about blogs, podcasts, the Chinese in the UK, cross-cultural issues, globalisation, Malaysian bloggers and much more. It was great to get his perspective as a blogs and pods watcher as well as sharing mine with him as a blogger and podcaster.

He only pulled out his recording equipment after lunch and we wandered around trying to find a quiet corner for him to record the interview. We ended up standing in an alleyway, not far from a white van where a couple of builders were having their sarnies and thermos of tea. Having had a good old chat over lunch, the moment Chris thrust his fancy microphone towards me, I went completely blank and started stammering and dithering - we had to start again several times before I hit my stride and could even say anything sensible about who I was and what Fusion View is all about! I’ve interviewed a number of people on my podcasts and I have to say, it’s utterly different being on the other end of the mike - I have even greater respect now for my Fusion View interviewees in that they never had to do any re-takes and just started chatting with confidence and panache.

The interview was only 10 minutes and we ended up focusing on my novels rather more than on Fusion View. After we finished, I realised I hadn’t had a chance to talk about the various themes of my blog such as:

# Fusion Stories - personal stories of people who live cross-cultural lives eg a Welsh-Iranian student, a South African living in Germany, a Caucasian-American who writes fiction in Mandarin.
# How switching between my “two voices“, speaking “proper” English and heavily accented Malaysian-English, affects my personality and identity
# Podcast interviews with Lucy Luck, a literary agent and Terry Bailey, a lecturer in screenwriting
# Curious Legacies - Recipes and other legacies from people who have influenced my life eg my first boyfriend’s recipe for Hairdryer Duck and my grandmother’s recipe for Soy Sauce Chicken.
# Legacy Blogging: stories from my family eg a recording from 1976 of my late grandfather telling the story of the “first ancestor” from China and my father’s Memories of Malaya during the Japanese occupation.

Chris also wanted me to explain to the world the equipment I use to do my podcasts. I had described it to him over lunch and he thought it was worthwhile for other potential podcasters to know that the equipment didn’t have to be too fancy or expensive - although I have to say, I was rather impressed by his equipment: the professional big flash drive; the robust noise-cancelling microphone and all those buttons. In the end, they didn’t use that bit of the interview in the piece they broadcast but anyway, here’s a picture of my home-made podcasting gear.

That’s a wooden kitchen roll holder and slotted into it is an old leather mobile phone case. The digital recorder sits snugly in the leather case. Ideally, I sit at a table with my interviewee with the equipment sort of in the middle on the table between us. I point the recorder at them when they speak. When it’s my turn to speak, I swivel it towards me by turning the base gently, ask my question and then swivel it back to them. The advantage is that my arm doesn’t get tired holding the recorder up and it also sits a sufficient distance away from our mouths to avoid explosive “PPPs” and “TTTs”. I’m tickled that Chris, the professional BBC journalist, has given it his seal of approval!

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The variety and fun of Fusion View would not have been possible without all the people who contributed to it through writing guest pieces, agreeing to be interviewed, adding comments or emailing me in response to posts - and also all those offline who sparked ideas for posts through our conversations over coffee and dinner. So thanks to everyone who has been part of the Fusion View community is some way or other!

In association with Silvia Cambie, Director of Chanda Communications, we are jointly publishing a hard copy newsletter, New Media Culture, which we will be giving out at conferences and workshops. We have just brought out Issue 1, which we circulated at the IABC Leadership Institute in Slovenia last week.

The pdf version of the first issue of New Media Culture and also subsequent issues will also be available online - click on the tab for Events & Resources at the top of the ZenGuide site.

You can also download a copy by clicking on the title below.

New Media Culture Issue 1: Why Blog? - the practical benefits of blogging ; Trading Secrets for Dialogue - the case for engaging in social media

Please feel free to circulate copies to anyone else who may find it interesting.

Note: ZenGuide is updated on Mondays and Thursdays.

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Having added auto-podcasting to my other blog Fusion View, I’ve added also added a new gadget here so you can download ZenGuide posts as audio files onto your iPod or MP3 and listen to them wherever you are.

So no more being glued to the computer screen - you can enjoy my posts on the move.

All you have to do is drag and drop the Talkr badge below into your podcast tuner.

The easiest way is to minimise this screen in front of your iTunes (or other podcast catcher/ tuner screen) and drap and drop the badge into iTunes (or other podcast tuner).

The posts are read by a clever automated text reader that sounds like an American woman. It’s actually pretty realistic and natural sounding, considering she’s a bunch of bytes and digital data. Try it out and let me know what you think.

You can try it out by listening to my post on Simple Online Marketing (click here) (05min 30sec) - or by clicking on the grey audio player below.

Photo: thanks to dtechnews.com

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (336)

For clients of my ZenGuide Consultancy, I am offering a special Client Resources category on this blog. This resource is available on a members-only basis exclusively for ZenGuide Clients. Access is free and by invitation only. This means that as a ZenGuide Client, you will be able to benefit from additional resources to help you make more effective use of your blog and social media tools.

All ZenGuide Consultancy Clients are given login details to this members-only Client Resource section. All you have to do to access the additional resources is to login to ZenGuide via the Login link in the far right sidebar under “Networks & Communities”. You will then be able to view the private content in posts marked “Client Resource” as well as viewing all the other posts on this blog.